“Do you realize this is the first time I’ve seen you out of uniform?”
“Actually, the second.”
He shook his head and smiled. “You’re the one who brought it up.”
“I thought I ought to clear the air.”
He crossed the room and handed her one of the drinks. “Anyway, you look nice.”
“Thank you.”
They went on standing that way for a moment. Beyond the window, a truck rumbled by, then the room went silent again. He lifted his right hand and ran an index finger over her shoulder where the strap of her dress had slipped off.
“You got burnt.”
She stood waiting. A group of boys went by, shouting in German. Then a single English sentence floated to the window. “So’s your old man.”
They both laughed. “Forget translations of Steinbeck. We’re spreading plenty of American culture.” He took his hand from her shoulder. “And I promised you dinner.”
She was relieved. Really, she was. The last thing she wanted was a replay of that embarrassing night. But later, after they’d had dinner and he’d driven her home through the Berlin night that somehow didn’t seem quite so forbidding in warm weather, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, toothbrush in one hand, glass of purified water in the other, looking at the pale marks the straps of her dress had left and thinking about the evening. She hadn’t realized she’d gotten sunburnt until he’d run his finger over her shoulder. The burnt skin had felt hot and tender under the pressure. He’d used his right hand, his undamaged hand, as she thought of it. But who was she to talk of damage?
That was why nothing had happened this evening. Maybe it was self-protection after that first disastrous night in his apartment, or maybe it was simply lack of attraction to the walking wounded. Whatever his motives, he obviously had no intention of getting mixed up with a girl who was so hopelessly mixed up herself.
Twenty-Three
Later she’d think it odd that the three incidents occurred in a single day. Or maybe it wasn’t odd. Maybe she was just ready to notice.
The first took place in her office that morning when she interviewed a potential translator. She’d been surprised to find the woman’s name on the list. According to the file, the woman had worked translating British and American children’s books into German during the first five years the Nazis were in power. Millie was curious but decided the woman’s culpability, or lack of it, was no longer her purview. Instead she asked the woman whether she’d ever translated anything besides juveniles.
The woman sat very straight in the chair beside Millie’s desk—the space was too small for them to sit across from each other—her gray-streaked hair pulled back in a tight bun beneath an obviously prewar cloche, her hands in neatly patched cotton gloves folded in her lap, her eyes holding Millie’s steadily. She was so self-possessed Millie felt as if she were the one auditioning.
“I started out translating scientific articles,” the woman began, “then turned to children’s books for my son. I wanted him to be able to read as many different kinds of books as possible. He was not permitted to go to school. They said he was mentally infirm. He was not mentally infirm. He was different. He did not function well in a classroom with many other children, but he was very bright. By the time he was six, he had memorized the entire Berlin transportation system, every tram, U-Bahn, and S-Bahn, their designations, their routes, everything.”
Millie looked at the file again. She’d sworn she wasn’t going to inquire into the woman’s political past—that wasn’t her job—but old habits, old obsessions, die hard. She asked the woman why she hadn’t worked after 1938.
“There was no need to translate children’s books after that. My son was gone. They took him to the House of Shutters.” The woman hesitated. “You have heard of it? The official name was the Hadamar Euthanasia Center.”
Somehow Millie managed the futile words again. “I’m sorry.”
“That is why I am applying for a job as a translator,” the woman went on. “For years this country has read nothing but propaganda. Perhaps you think I am naïve to believe that a few books, a handful of words, can change the world. Can prevent more Houses of Shutters in Germany. But I have to have hope. How can you live without hope?”
Millie knew the use of the word you in the sentence was colloquial. Perhaps the woman was trying to demonstrate her familiarity with English idiom. The question had not been directed at her. She’d meant one, not Millie. How can one live without hope?
She glanced at the stack of books piled on the floor beside her desk. She’d intended to give the woman The Call of the Wild, but some rumor of Jack London’s flirtation with eugenics came back to her. So many Progressives of that era had indulged in similar flirtations, and she was sure it didn’t intrude in this particular book of his, but she didn’t want to take the chance. She pulled Main Street from the stack of books. “The author was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature,” she explained as she handed the woman the volume.
“You see,” the woman said as she took it. “I had hope for this job, and now it has come through.”
* * *
She was still thinking about the question, or the hope, of hope on her way to the Anhalter Bahnhof that afternoon. It was her third trip to the station, and she’d made up her mind that this time there would be no hysterics or mishaps. She was seeing someone off again, but this was a happy parting. Anna and Elke were leaving for Hamburg, where they would board a ship to the States. And this time she had David with her.
They were milling around the station platform, the four of them and a man named Emil Kohn. Anna had tried to discourage him from coming to see her off. She’d given half a dozen reasons, but not the real one. She was embarrassed, or perhaps only afraid. It had been a long time since anyone had fallen in love with her. And she had Elke to think of now, though that was scarcely an argument against his seeing them off. Elke was crazy about Emil. She may have had a surfeit of mothers, but she’d never known a father. Emil had promised her she would have one before long. It was only a matter of time until his papers came through, he followed them to the States, and they were a family.
Millie was happy for Anna, but surprised. She didn’t understand how the damaged woman Anna had become could join this riotous orgy of marriage and hope. There was that word again. But the more she thought about it, the more logical it became. Millie would never put it into words. She would never give even an inkling of what she was thinking to David. But her reasoning made sense. Anna, and Emil because he’d been in the camps too, had earned the right to happiness. They’d paid for it with unimaginable suffering. Those who’d had it easy, who’d stood by while others suffered, who’d been responsible for others’ suffering, had no such right.
She and David stood on the platform waving until they knew Anna and Elke could no longer see them, then said goodbye to Emil, who couldn’t seem to tear himself away, and started back to the station.
“You sure you’re going to be all right?” David asked her as they stepped into the rubble. A light drizzle was falling through the ruins of the roof.
“I’m fine,” she answered, but didn’t speak again until they’d made their way across the space. She was working too hard at keeping the ghosts at bay. “Are you coming home?” she asked when they were out on the street. “No pressure, I swear. I just want to know if I should make dinner.”
“No need to bother.”
“Another night drive to Stettin?”
He stood looking down at her. “More dangerous than that,” he answered, but he was grinning. “I have a date. Not a Fraulein, in case you were worried, and I know you were. She’s a Brit aid worker.”
“That doesn’t sound so dangerous.”
“You haven’t seen her. She’s a knockout,” he tossed over his shoulder as he started away from her.
She stood watching him go, shouldering his way through the crowd with that long, loping gait, dragging a part of
her in his wake. He kept moving until only his head was visible above the throng, then turned a corner and disappeared. She felt the familiar flash of loss. But she was getting better at tamping it down. Really, she was.
* * *
He didn’t turn around, though he knew she was watching him. That was why he didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to see her standing there outside that damn station, trapped in the memory of that damn station.
The realization had come to him early one morning as the sun inched up behind them on the long ride back from Stettin. Maybe Stettin had something to do with it. Helping others survive was a kind of justification for his own survival. But she couldn’t seem to find the same vindication. And he couldn’t find it for her. He could love her. He could try to be there when she needed him. But in the war against herself, he was raising the white flag. From now on, she was the lone combatant.
* * *
There was no reason for Millie to stop in Harry’s office on her way out of her own that evening, except to tell him that Anna and Elke were on their way and to thank him again. It was after five, but he rarely left promptly.
She pushed open the door. The outer office was empty. The doors to the inner offices were closed. The place was silent. She was about to leave when she heard the murmur of voices. It was coming from the closet where they stored office supplies, care packages, and various items no one knew what to do with. She started in that direction. She wasn’t sure why. Neither voice was deep enough to be Harry’s. She was halfway down the hall when she realized the voices belonged to Fraulein Schmidt and Fraulein Weber. They were speaking in German, which they were careful not to do when others were in the office. The door to the closet was open, and Fraulein Schmidt was standing in front of the small mirror she’d had one of the men put up, her hand, holding a tube of lipstick, going back and forth over her mouth. Millie couldn’t see Fraulein Weber because of the angle of the door, but she could hear her.
“I told you, Bertha, I didn’t go out with Nazis, and I won’t go out with Amis.”
“I don’t see how you’re going to have any fun if you don’t. Besides, the Amis are nice.”
“That’s what you said about the Waffen-SS. ‘Oh, they’re really sweet boys, Annelise.’”
“Well, they were, and so are these boys. The difference is the Amis are generous. What good is having legs like yours if you’re plodding around in patched cotton stockings instead of nylons?”
“You make me sick.”
“Everyone makes you sick. The Waffen-SS. The Amis. The Ivans. I know you’ve had some hard times…”
“Everyone’s had hard times. I’m not asking for sympathy.”
“But you can’t—” Fraulein Schmidt must have glimpsed Millie out of the corner of her eye, because she stopped in mid-sentence and whirled to face her. “Did you want something, Captain Mosbach?”
“Nothing you can help with, thank you.”
Fraulein Schmidt stood staring at her for a moment, then closed her tube of lipstick, dropped it into her handbag, and pushed past Millie down the hall and out the door.
Fraulein Weber came out of the closet carrying one of the care packages and made her way to her desk. “If you want to report me, you can.”
“For what?”
“The package of food.”
Millie stood staring at her. “I’m not going to report you.”
“If you expect me to say thank you, I won’t.”
“I didn’t ask you to.” Millie started to leave, then turned back. “You really do hate us, don’t you?”
“No more than you hate Germans.”
“That’s different.”
“Why? Because you’re all good, and we’re all bad. Oh, you feel so sorry for yourself. Well, look around you, Captain. You’re not the only one who suffered.”
“Please, Fraulein Weber, I sat in this office for five months listening to what Germany endured at the hands of the Allies. But the Allies didn’t overrun all of Europe, or set up the concentration camps, or murder millions of innocent people.”
“Including my father and brother.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in before Millie could utter the familiar response. “I’m sorry.”
“Save your pity. Just stop being so damn holier than thou. You lost family to the Nazis. I lost family to both sides. My father was a communist. My brother was too, and something else just as bad according to the Nazis. How do you say it? He preferred boys to girls. They took them away together.”
“I’m sorry.” The inadequate words again.
“Wait, there’s more. My little brother died in the Diersfordt Forest. Who knows whether it was an Ami or Tommie bullet? He was thirteen. They gave him a gun and said protect the Fatherland. My mother and I managed to survive. Then the Red Army marched in. My father and brothers were victims. We were just stupid.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s right, you don’t. You understand nothing. Everyone knew the first thing the Ivans did was rape. It didn’t matter how old or young, ugly or infirm, feeble grannies or little girls, as long as you had a vagina they could stick themselves into. Of course, we tried to hide. That was where the stupidity came in. My mother and I went down to the cellar. Later we found out our neighbor who went up to the top floor of the building had better luck. I don’t know how she got so smart. Most of the Ivans had never seen a building of more than one or two stories. They were afraid to go any higher. But they knew about cellars. I don’t know how many that first day. My mother passed out after six. That didn’t stop them. I was conscious throughout. Eleven, but that doesn’t count two who took second turns. So don’t get into a competition with me, Captain. While you were sitting behind your desk hating me and Fraulein Schmidt and every German who walked through the door, I was behind my desk hating everyone.”
* * *
Millie wasn’t sure where she was headed when she came out of the building. All she knew was that she had to get away from Fraulein Weber. She thought of going to the hospital to see when Mary Jo went off duty. They could go to a movie. They could go to dinner and she could listen to Mary Jo’s problems. At least those could be solved one way or another.
It took her a minute to realize the drizzle from earlier in the day had turned into a steady rain. She opened her umbrella and started for the U-Bahn, then changed her mind. The thought of going underground was suddenly oppressive. Maybe it was Fraulein Weber’s story of the cellar. She had to walk it off, though she wasn’t sure what it was. The translator this morning whose son had been murdered in the House of Shutters but who still had hope. Fraulein Weber’s devastation that had left her with nothing but hatred. Or the visit to the station between the two incidents. Always the station.
She started walking. The rain was coming down harder now. She stood for a moment, debating whether to go down into the U-Bahn after all. Through the mist she spotted a streetcar approaching.
She found a seat near the rear of the car and slid into it. The city was starving, but somehow even emaciated men managed to take up too much room. The man on her right reeked of sweat, the one on her left of sweat and sour, wet clothing. Across the aisle, another man pushed open a window. The woman beside him complained he was letting in the rain. The man on her other side closed the window. The first man opened it again. The streetcar stopped, a passenger closer to the front got off, and she made a dash for the seat. Another man who was slower gave her a dirty look. She turned away from him and as she did, she noticed the woman sitting across from her. She was one of those girls Millie saw all over the city these days, not a Fraulein with nyloned legs and a crimson lipsticked mouth, but her sadder sister, another Fraulein Weber, in a shabby dress that hung on her as if on a hanger and made her look twice her age, though, Millie realized as she went on staring, the girl couldn’t have been much older than she was. Her exhaustion and defeat and something else—Millie went on staring—her misery, made her look older. She sat rigid and still, a
bsolutely apart from the jostling, hostile crowd. Her face was as lifeless as a mask. Her glazed, unseeing eyes reminded Millie of a doll Sarah had loved. When it was laid on its back, tiny eyelids with thick lashes closed over its eyes, but when it was upright, the lids popped up and it stared into space with a blind demonic intensity. Millie looked away from the woman. She couldn’t bear the eyes. And she’d be damned if she’d feel sorry for her. Just because she wasn’t a nylon-stockinged, lipsticked Fraulein didn’t mean she was another Fraulein Weber, broken by suffering, crushed by loss. For all Millie knew, she was having a hard time under the Occupation not because of the pain of what she’d been through or scruples about swapping her body for food, cigarettes, and a good time, but because she was an unrepentant Nazi, a she-werewolf waiting for the Reich to rise again.
The streetcar stopped abruptly, tossing people and bundles together. The girl clutched a box on her lap to keep it from sliding off. Millie hadn’t noticed the box before. She’d been too busy looking at those unnerving eyes. It was the size and shape of a florist’s box. Had someone given this sad creature flowers? Was she giving them to someone or perhaps on her way to a cemetery? She remembered the swastika on the headstone the day David had taken her to the bar mitzvah and steeled herself again against the pity. Besides, people didn’t take flowers to graves in boxes. And this box was made of wood, so it couldn’t be for flowers after all. From the way the girl was clutching it, it contained something more valuable. It could only be a family heirloom. She was on her way to a black market. Millie was sure of it.
She went on staring at the box, trying to fathom what was in it. Her mother’s silver chest had been similar, though that hadn’t been as long. Perhaps the girl came from a more affluent or aristocratic family who’d had need of fish knives and marrow spoons and other specialized utensils. A service like that would make quite a gift for an officer to send home to his wife. She could see him sitting at the head of a dining table in some small town in years to come. “I picked it up for a song when I was stationed in Berlin.”
The Living and the Lost Page 24